This is a world of anti-blackness, one where the contributions of Africans and the African Diaspora are erased, stolen or undervalued. This is doubly true for black women around the world and is quite evident in the way black female athletes are treated. Her achievements cannot be celebrated without a hypercriticism of her athletic flaws, or extensive criticism of her appearance or her supposed lack of femininity.
The imprisonment of American basketball player Brittney Griner is a recent example. Her six-foot-nine frame (206 centimeters tall), her queerness, and her blackness already stood against her in an anti-black, anti-queer, and misogynistic world. As one of the all-time best in the WNBA, she was earning just $250,000 a year, so she had to travel to Russia, where racism and homophobia are rife, to play for a local basketball team for an additional $1.5 million. .
In February, just before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian authorities imprisoned her to use her as a political pawn in their conflict with the West, without regard to her physical, psychological or spiritual health. America hasn’t valued Griner as its person either, as he misses scheduled phone calls and rarely communicates with her. That President Joe Biden finally met with her wife, Cherelle Griner, in mid-September does not negate the lack of value placed on her mental health, her career, and her life in the game. serious of geopolitical positions.
This is not just the problem of an exceptionally gifted black athlete. The misogyny faced by female athletes around the world devalues their successes, the hardships they have experienced, and the hard work they have put in to compete nationally and internationally.
I realized the underestimation of black women as athletes growing up in the 1980s. I didn’t find out about the time my mother was a successful high school basketball player in Jim Crow Arkansas until I was almost 16 years old. . “Yes, Donald, I played,” she said nonchalantly during a call with her siblings and parents on Thanksgiving Day 1985.
Even with that, I didn’t find out until she was 23 that she helped lead her team to the 1965 segregated state quarterfinals. She underestimated her 30-point scoring in some of these games, she underestimated her team, and she underestimated the impact. what learning this at age five or 13 would have had on me as an athlete or as a black person.
My mom downplayed her athleticism and achievements as if they didn’t matter because, in a Jim Crow world of white racism and black patriarchy, to so many, they didn’t matter. That lesson has stayed with me in the 37 years since I first learned about my mother’s athletic success and has framed my thinking about the devaluation of black athletes in all sports.
I remember how, in the 1980s, American commentators portrayed two-time US Open winner Tracy Austin as the blond symbol of a quintessential tennis player who couldn’t be wrong, a younger Chris Evert, herself called “girl next door”.
I also remember how around the same time, the same commentators only talked about Zina Garrison, an African-American tennis player, in vague athletic terms, complaining about her hamstrings and thighs, and speculating that she could win on tour, being so muscular.
This criticism came despite Garrison being ranked in the top 10 tennis players in the world between 1983 and 1990, despite her beating Evert, Martina Navratilova and Steffi Graf when they were at or near their prime. I found the contrast in coverage between black and white tennis players in terms of appearance and competitive expectations irritating.
Then came the 1990s, when Venus and Serena Williams conquered the court and dominated the sport for the next quarter century. But even with them, white women continued to be favored in media coverage. Despite cover stories in Vogue and Time magazines, Serena has never had everything she deserves from her during her long and stratospheric career, in which she won 23 Grand Slam singles titles.
Venus hasn’t earned her recognition as one of the greatest of all time either, with seven Grand Slam titles to her credit, including five Wimbledon victories. Together, they also have 14 Grand Slam doubles titles. That makes it a mind-boggling 44 combined titles in the four Grand Slam tournaments since the 1990s.
Criticism of her hairstyles and especially her beaded braids, of Serena’s post-pregnancy catsuit, of her “I mean, I’m just Serena” arrogance, of her on-court complaints about questionable referee calls, of her musculature has persisted over the years.
There have also been perennial comparisons between Serena and all-time women’s champion (and homophobic) Margaret Court, despite the fact that more than half of Court’s 24 Grand Slam singles victories occurred before 1968, when they were considered competitions. for amateur players.
Then there are the Anna Kournikovas and Maria Sharapovas of the sport who have received much more accolades (and modeling contracts) as young, relatively skinny white women, despite their flaws and, in Kournikova’s case, their very limited ability to compete professionally. .
When black women have been unable to succeed in white-dominated sports or have taken time off to preserve their sanity, critics have been there to mock them. Garrison certainly faced a lot of criticism for her game and her thighs because she never won a single Grand Slam singles tournament and dealt with and battled bulimia for much of her career.
Former black Japanese number one tennis player Naomi Osaka, with four Grand Slam singles titles to her credit, faced an onslaught of criticism for her criticism of press conferences and her eventual withdrawal from the 2021 French Open due to her anxiety. and depression.
In the US, conservative pundit Charlie Kirk called gymnast Simone Biles, a four-time Olympic gold medalist, arguably the greatest gymnast of all time, “a selfish sociopath” for pulling out of the Olympic Games in Tokyo last year. last. She made this decision after she lost track of herself in the air during a complex routine, something that could have caused her a terrible injury. This constant gaslighting has diminished these powerful athletes, perhaps even shortening their careers.
Many black and African women have also faced institutionalized discrimination in the form of gender norms and high testosterone (high T) limits and bans on athletics. Recent science on this topic indicates that high T alone does not provide an athletic advantage to female, transgender, or intersex athletes.
Despite the evidence, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has insisted on excluding athletes with high T. If athletes with high T want to compete, especially in track and field, they would need to take hormone therapy to suppress their natural testosterone production. . Even the International Olympic Committee backed down from this stance after the Tokyo Olympics, ultimately relinquishing decisions to restrict the participation of high-T athletes to individual sports organizations.
The athletes most affected by these arbitrary distinctions are black and African women, such as intersex middle-distance runner Caster Semenya of South Africa, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in the women’s 800m event. She is barred from competing internationally unless she lowers her testosterone level, a ruling that Semenya has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights.
There are many others who face similar exclusion and discrimination, including Beatrice Masilingi, Christine Mboma, Francine Niyonsaba, Aminatou Seyni and Margaret Wambui.
At the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, where Semenya won gold, Burundi’s Niyonsaba won silver and Kenya’s Wambui won bronze in the 800m, Polish runner Joanna Jozwik, who finished fifth, delivered the real reason why. which so many Europeans support high T bans.
“These guys have a very high testosterone level, similar to that of a man, that’s why they look the way they do and run the way they run… I saw [Canada’s] Melissa Bishop, who was very disappointed…I think I should be the gold medalist…I’m glad to be the first European, second white,” Jozwik said after the event.
To her and to much of the world, black and African female athletes do not look or act like white and European women and deserve the trauma of withering scrutiny over their testosterone levels. Even more than black men, black women are the scapegoats of a white-dominated world of unfair advantage.
It is within this global context that an athlete of the stature of Griner must suffer in a Russian prison cell for what is, at worst, a misdemeanor. And it is in this context that only now, on the threshold of retirement, is the world outside of sport appreciating a quarter century of excellence from Serena and Venus black women. And it is this anti-black woman context that continues to limit femininity and womanhood to heteronormative white and European girls and women and makes international athletic participation by every black woman a precarious endeavor.
It is shameful and unacceptable that the world continues to devalue Black athletes and their humanity.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
